The key is "injected" into the Computers UEFI. All you have to do in get a copy of a windows 8/pro DVD and re-install it. Windows will detect the key upon installation and will activate upon having a network connection.

Source: I dealt with this issue a handful of times and on my own notebook as well.

The key is "injected" into the Computers UEFI. All you have to do in get a copy of a windows 8/pro DVD and re-install it. Windows will detect the key upon installation and will activate upon having a network connection.

Source: I dealt with this issue a handful of times and on my own notebook as well.

hmm but when I installed windows 8it asked me to put in a key and even when I connect to the internet it didn't activate anything.

The key is "injected" into the Computers UEFI. All you have to do in get a copy of a windows 8/pro DVD and re-install it. Windows will detect the key upon installation and will activate upon having a network connection.

Source: I dealt with this issue a handful of times and on my own notebook as well.

A) No, there is no CoA under the battery, under the motherboard, on the bottom, etc etc etc.
B) No, many of these machines don't have the serial number built into the UEFI, I've tried UEFI installs, and legacy installs to no avail of retrieving the serial number.
C) He probably wiped the recovery partition because it has a small (120GB or so) SSD in it, and the recovery partition is sucking down 20+ GB.
D) The only 2 ways that I've found to get the serial number is to grab it with something PRIOR to wiping the machine (I use Produkey x64) or by calling the OEM directly if you've already wiped.
E) There was ONE machine that had the CoA on the power plug (wierdest place in the world to have on IMO)

the laptop has 128gb SSD after the recovery partitions and everything it was down to about 70 gigs of useable space
so I thought I could get some more free hdd space
not to mention I like doing a clean install because notebooks come with a lot of crap.

Ive done this countless times with my other laptops, but obviously im not up to date with the whole uefi, maybe I should get the electric chair?

everyone has done something stupid with computers without thinking it through 100%, this was one of those times..